Marche Taylor's prom dress was intended to attract attention. It certainly did that!

If you've not heard the story, she had a dress custom-made for her, for her high school prom. When she showed up at the prom, she got no further than the lobby; they told her that the dress was inappropriate. She offered to wear additional clothing to make her outfit more concealing. They wouldn't accept that compromise, and told her that she was flat-out forbidden to enter. In that case, she said, give me my money back. Instead, they had her arrested.

It's pretty obvious that her outfit is pretty slutty. On the other hand, it's been about a decade since I helped a young lady shopping for a prom dress, and I was pretty disappointed by what was available. There were dresses that looked dowdy and matronly. There were dresses that were sufficiently revealing that the young lady felt a little uncomfortable being seen in them.

It wasn't that she wasn't attractive and appealing; in fact, she was well-built, with legs that seemed to go all the way up to her armpits. Normally, I was the one that was a little embarassed, because even in a t-shirt and jeans, she was a knockout, and I had a hard time trying to bolster her self-confidence - which needed a little bolstering - without appearing to be hitting on her. (I was dating her mother, who was similarly very attractive.)

What I would have liked for her was a simple well-cut dress, sleek and elegant, that would conceal her skin without burying her in acres of bric-a-brac. I'm talking about the elegant satin evening gowns that demure young oriental women wore in movies of the 1960s. Instead, what the stores had were shapeless dresses with all sorts of do-hickeys sewn on them - which is exactly what a young lady needs for the prom if her body hasn't yet developed a womanly figure - or else gowns that would be appropriate for a Madonna music video.

And mind, I have nothing against a grown woman choosing to dress with cleavage that goes to the navel, with the breasts half-exposed, and a backless design that comes within a tenth of an inch of exposing a plumber's crack. That young lady's mother offered to get such a dress, and asked if I'd like to see her in such an outfit, and she smiled when I said, "I'd like nothing better." But there just aren't very many places you can go, dressed like that.

Actually, the fondest memories I have of my late first wife, she's dressed in jeans and an oversized white man's shirt, the tails flapping in the breeze, and she's holding a tackle box in one hand, a rod and reel in the other. There are few "looks" that have more appeal than a simple well-scrubbed face - and few perfumes that can compete with soap, recently applied.

So if half the crowd is dressed up in Ethyl Mertz frump, and half the crowd is dressed up as slatterns, I don't see any problem with Marche Taylor's outfit.

Schools have an argument for dress codes during the school day, saying that immodest clothing disrupts the learning process. Having once been a teenaged boy, I think they're wrong; there is no clothing sufficiently modest that the presence of a sexy teenaged girl isn't going to disrupt the thinking process of a typical teenaged boy. Come to think of it, I recall having my thinking processes disrupted by sexy teenaged girls who weren't even present.

But what could possibly be the justification for a dress code for the prom? It's not like students at the prom are going to be studying trigonometry, if the girls all dress demurely.

The school says that the dress code was distributed ahead of time, and students had to agree to it. However, the dress code isn't available online. It would be useful to look at it, and decide if the standards were clearly stated.

My guess is that the dress code was vague and poorly worded - sort of a "only appropriate attire is acceptable" dress code, without any real definition of what "appropriate" amounts to. The fact that the school administration showed such bad judgment as to have her arrested for requesting a refund her money, suggests that the school administrators have pretty poor judgment.

I read once that 93% of all school administrators are former coaches - and coaches tend to be strong in bullying, weak in reasoned discussion.

Madison High School isn't a regular school. It's the "meteorology and space science" school of the Houston Independent School District. I realize that intelligence and maturity don't go hand in hand, but school administrators generally cut better students a little more slack. It seems to me that although Marche Taylor's attire may have been a little disreputable, the behavior of the school administrators was considerably disreputable.

Madison is considering uniforms instead of a dress code for next year. Principal Dr. Aubrey Todd is quoted in the school newspaper, the Marlin, as saying uniforms would "allow us to refocus our priorities on learning by minimizing dress code issues. There are two components of uniformed dress. The first is a neat appearance, and the second is added safety. Uniforms are a positive cultural and environmental change for Madison." Do dancers commonly trip due to bare midriffs?

The slogan of the Texas PTA is "every child. one voice." It's such a shame that they can't allow each child to have his own voice.

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